


The Difficult Road to Happiness

by almostannette



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Coming Out (1989), Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
Genre: Canon Fix-It, M/M, Oliver doesn't go back to America, and not go home and get married, instead he goes to Paris and meets a gay couple who convince him to talk to Elio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 01:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14069592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostannette/pseuds/almostannette
Summary: Oliver does not get on the plane which would take him back home to America. Instead, he goes to Paris, where he meets a couple who convince him that in order to be happy with Elio, he needs to make some tough choices and face his fears...





	The Difficult Road to Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> After I wrote a canon-compliant angsty 5+1, I decided to write a canon fix-it. (It's almost obligatory for this ship, isn't it?)
> 
> Please see the end notes for more info about what inspired this fic - besides Call Me By Your Name, of course.
> 
> Thanks to [Binary_Sunset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Binary_Sunset/pseuds/Binary_Sunset) and [writingramblr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingramblr) for encouragement and support throughout the whole writing process!

_“I would go as they had, firmly and courageously, to enter upon the difficult road to happiness”_ \- Jamila by Chinghiz Aitmatov

* * *

Oliver does not get on the plane which would take him back home to America.

Home.

During the last six weeks, Oliver has become detached from the place he used to call home. Whenever he thinks about it, it feels like he remembers scenes from another life, a life that wasn’t really his, to begin with. He’s gotten used to associating “home” with a villa in Crema, situated in the middle of an orchard.

Back when he first applied for the spot in the exchange program, six weeks sounded like a long time. Thinking back to it, the time passed in the blink of an eye. Those six weeks, however, were still enough to turn his whole life upside down. There’s not much left of the man who left New York to study in Italy.

He’s a mess.

Oliver doesn’t feel like going back to America, and going back to Crema is out of the question. If Elio is only half as affected by the situation as he is, the Perlmans must have found out by now. How did they react?

For that matter, how would his own parents react? His mother would start to cry and his father would be furious. He’d be thrown out of the house in a matter of seconds.

Oliver can’t bring himself to consider the possibility of the Perlmans being angry with Elio, they love their son too much for that. At least Elio won’t get in trouble. It’s the only thing that makes him feel a little less guilty for not being strong enough to keep his distance.

The Perlmans wouldn’t be nearly as merciful when it comes to him. Imagining their disappointed, even disgusted faces...It’s what he deserves. Oliver ought to have known better than to give in. It would have saved them both a lot of pain.

It’s a testament to Oliver’s weakness, but if he were given the chance to turn back the time, he knows he would make the exact same choices again, the same wrong choices that led him to fall in love with Elio.

Oliver takes one last look at his plane ticket and throws it away before he buys a ticket for the next train that’s due to depart. He doesn’t really care where he ends up.

On the train, he tries to find a position that allows him to comfortably fit into the narrow seat. The train conductor asks him in a worried voice whether he is feeling alright since he looks like he’s about to be sick. Oliver lies and says that he is fine.

Hours later, when he gets off the train, he takes a trip to the train station bathroom. A look in the mirror is enough to conclude that the conductor was being sympathetic. At first, he doesn’t even recognize himself. His hair is greasy and there are big bags under his eyes. Even though he acquired a tan over the summer, his complexion looks sallow and unhealthy.

He splashes his face with ice-cold water and feels marginally better afterward. He walks out of the bathroom and, once again, purchases a ticket for a train that’s due to leave in ten minutes.

The destination is ironic - Paris. The City of Lights. The City of Love.

Oliver gets on the train, once again fails to find a comfortable seat, and so he just rests his head against the window. The rhythm of the train lulls him to sleep, something he hadn’t thought possible in his current state of mind, but it turns out that he can only worry for so long until he’s completely exhausted.

When he wakes up a couple of hours later, he’s arrived in Paris.

* * *

From the outside, the bar looks inconspicuous, like the perfect place to mope and down a few drinks too many. Exactly what Oliver needs. He snorts when he reads the name of the bar - “Héphestion”. Do the owners know the implication of that name, or did they choose it just because it sounds fancy? Oliver guesses it’s the latter.

He counts his money. By now, he’s almost sure that the money changer he’s been to ripped him off - he was an easy victim, after all, obviously a foreigner with little to no command of the language and in a distracted state of mind. The result is sobering, if not surprising.

However, he can afford one more night of drinking and being miserable, before he has to call his father and ask him to send money. That is if the Perlmans didn’t already throw a fit and complained to his family how Oliver had violated their trust and…

He enters the bar. It’s early and there aren’t many guests, yet. Oliver sits down at a barstool. The bartender is a man in his early fifties, with dark eyes and graying hair. Despite his age, he’s still good-looking. In his younger years, he must have been devastatingly attractive.

The bartender approaches him and starts talking to him in French.

Oliver says he’s sorry, but he only speaks English and Italian, not French.

“Lucky for you, then, that I speak both,” the bartender replies in English. He only has a slight accent. “You’re a tourist?”

“Sort of,” Oliver replies.

“Enjoying Paris?”

He shrugs. “Not much, to be honest.”

“I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said yes, anyway,” the bartender says. “No offense, boy, but you look awful. What’s wrong?”

“Can I get a drink?” Oliver asks because if he’s about to divulge his sorrows to a complete stranger, he at least wants to have the option to get drunk enough to not remember the humiliation that’s sure to come.

The bartender nods. “By the way, I’m Giovanni.”

“I’m Oliver.”

“What do you want to drink, Oliver?”

“Just give me whatever. I really don’t care,” Oliver sighs and rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. He stayed in a cheap hostel for the night. He got about two hours of sleep, and that’s already generous. The bed was both too small for him and too large, too empty - he spent hours wishing Elio was sharing the bed with him.

The bartender sets a drink in front of him.

Oliver takes a sip and nods approvingly. “It’s good.”

“Of course it’s good,” Giovanni says. “I mixed it.”

That gets a small laugh out of Oliver and it’s strange, but he almost forgot what it’s like to feel carefree enough to laugh.

“So, what’s on your mind, Oliver?”

“Are you sure you’ve got time to talk to me?” he asks in a last attempt to discourage Giovanni from making him spill his secrets.

“Not much business, today,” Giovanni replies. “I’ve got time. So, tell me, why are you sitting in a bar like this, looking like you haven’t slept in days and sigh like an old woman every few seconds? Did your boyfriend run off with another man?”

Oliver flinches and stares at Giovanni, incredulous. “How...,” he whispers. “How do you know I’m…,” he tries again, but can’t bring himself to say the words just yet. How did Giovanni figure it out within five minutes of meeting him?

Giovanni looks oddly amused - Oliver thinks it’s not at all appropriate for a situation like this. “I thought it was obvious,” Giovanni says. “You do know what kind of bar this is, Oliver?”

This time, he really looks. All of the bar’s patrons are male, some of them are sitting so close together that they can’t be anything other than couples. “Oh,” Oliver says quietly and he suddenly feels extremely stupid. “Wait, are you gay, too?”

“I’ve had relationships with women, too,” Giovanni explains. “To be perfectly honest, I was married, once. But I’ve been living with a man for the past 25 years or so.”

Oliver blinks, surprised, and starts to wonder how that would be like. The longest relationship he's sustained is with Suzie and it's been on and off again the entire time. They get along and the sex is fun, but it’s nothing like what being with Elio had felt like, not even in the beginning.

“So, was I right? Did your boyfriend leave you?” Giovanni asks when Oliver doesn't say anything.

He takes a large gulp of his drink. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“Of course it is,” Giovanni says with a wry smile. “It’s always more complicated than that.”

Oliver starts telling him about Elio, about everything that happened between the two of them (or almost everything, at least) and how he couldn't bring himself to go back to the US. “It doesn't feel right,” he explains. “If I go home, I’ll have to pretend that I'm not living a lie...I don't know if I can do that, not after what happened...I don’t want to do that.”

He finishes his drink and Giovanni starts mixing him another one right away.

“What do you want?” Giovanni asks him as he hands Oliver the new drink.

He says the first thing that crosses his mind. “To be with Elio.” He lights a cigarette and inhales deeply.

“So, if you know what you want, then…”

“It’s not possible,” Oliver insists. “His parents will hate me when they find out - if they haven’t found out already, that is - and Elio probably hates me, too.”

Giovanni frowns. “Why would he hate you?” he asks. “What did you do to him?”

Oliver shrugs. “I should have kept my distance,” he says, takes one last drag of his cigarette and almost violently stubs it out in the ashtray. “I shouldn’t have...I’m scared he regrets it. That I’ll be a bad memory for him and that…”

“What makes you think he would have bad memories?” Giovanni asks, sounding worried. “Did you do anything he didn’t want to?”

“No,” Oliver replies vehemently. “No, I would never do anything to hurt Elio, but he’s...he deserves someone who can love him like he deserves. Not someone like me, who’s messed up and scared of his own feelings half the time.”

Giovanni nods with a thoughtful expression. He wants to say something in response to Oliver's confession but is interrupted by a man coming out of the bar’s backroom who speaks to him in rapid-fire French.

The new man is a bit on the short and stocky side. He is about the same age as Giovanni and his hair, which might have been blond when he had been younger has gone fully gray.

“Trading me in for a younger model? I’m wounded,” the man laughs, walks up to Giovanni and places his hand on the bartender’s lower back. The gesture is too deliberate to be casual and Oliver is torn between averting his eyes, not wanting to intrude in a private moment and staring shamelessly at the display of something he wants but will never have.

“No, but I was going to ask you if you had a kid in America you never told me about,” Giovanni retorts, squeezing the man's hand in an affectionate gesture. “He's so much like you when you were that age, David. It's uncanny.”

The man - David - looks at Oliver. “Like me? In what way?”

Giovanni says something in French. From the way David grimaces, Oliver thinks it can't have been very flattering for either of them. “Speak with him,” Giovanni pleads with David. “Talk some sense into him, please.”

“Wouldn't you be more qualified for that?” David asks. “You talked sense into me, after all.”

“And how long did that take me?”

“Fair,” David says and rolls his eyes. “I'll talk to him.”

David fixes himself a drink and sits down at the bar stool next to Oliver. “Giovanni told me you messed up,” he says. It's not a question, not even a rhetorical one.

Oliver just nods and can't tell if the heat in his cheeks is due to shame or courtesy of the alcohol kicking. He tells David what he told Giovanni, he speaks about Elio and how much the last few weeks had meant to him. How much Elio means to him.

David listens attentively.

Once Oliver has recounted their goodbye at the train station and his subsequent breakdown, David gives him an inquisitive look.

“Does he know how important he is to you?” David asks.

Oliver frowns. What sort of question is that?

“I mean, did you ever tell him how you felt?” David clarifies upon seeing Oliver's confused expression.

“I don't think so, but I'm sure it must have been obvious from the way I acted around him,” he says. “He can't _not_ have known,” he adds, suddenly no longer so sure. He can't bear to think about Elio believing that Oliver moved on like nothing had happened. “He might not know…,” he mumbled and buries his head in his hands. The Perlmans finding out that Oliver became more and more infatuated with Elio over the course of his stay is one thing, but if they suspect that he just used Elio because he was bored or....“Shit,” he says. “Shit, shit, shit.”

He feels a hand on his shoulder and looks up again. David is looking at him with a sympathetic, perhaps a little tortured expression and sighs. “It’s alright, Oliver,” he says. “Believe me when I say I’ve been there,” he adds and glances back to the bar, where Giovanni is mixing a drink, acting as though he’s not observing their conversation.

“You mean…?”

David nods before he can even finish his sentence.

“But you two seem so happy,” Oliver points out.

“We are,” David confirms. “ _Now_. We had to work through a lot of issues in the beginning. It started as a fling but it quickly became more and it scared the hell out of me. I almost destroyed everything,” he pauses, pulls out a cigarette and lights it.

“Fumare è un’abitudine disgustosa!”, Giovanni yells from the bar. “Your mouth is going to taste like an ashtray.”

David yells back something in French that Oliver can’t understand, but from the way Giovanni’s face lights up and from his response - “La considero una promessa!” - Oliver can make a fair guess of what has been said.

David grins at his partner one last time before he turns back to Oliver. “Sorry,” he says and takes a drag of his cigarette.

“Seeing you like that,” Oliver begins and gestures from David to Giovanni, “I can hardly believe that you ever had to work through issues...that you two were ever unhappy.”

“It took a lot of work and time,” David says. “We both had our issues, worries, and fears to work through, but we realized that if we didn’t at least try to resolve them and see what might happen, then we would both be unhappy for the rest of our lives. It was painful, at times, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.”

Oliver takes another sip of his drink. “What if it hadn’t turned out alright? What if you had tried to fix it but then found out that it wouldn’t work?”

“Then I would have suffered,” David answers. “I would have been devastated, for sure. However, I would have also been able to get over it and commit to a new partner. You know why? Because at least I would have made an attempt to patch things up with Giovanni and be honest with him about how I felt. If we hadn’t talked...I would probably be stuck in an unhappy marriage and cursing my own cowardice every day.”

Oliver winces. It’s not as though he hasn’t thought about proposing to Suzie, a last resort, perhaps. Deep down inside, he’s always known that it wouldn’t have worked anyway, but he felt that, if he were married, he wouldn’t be tempted to try to reconnect with Elio.

He wants to take David’s advice to heart, he really does, but how should he explain that Elio most probably hates him, that his entire life is going to be turned upside down if he goes ahead and chooses whatever slim chance he has to talk things out with Elio and Elio not hating him by the end of that conversation?

Then, there’s the matter of his family…

“If my father found out, he would disown me,” Oliver says, so he doesn’t have to keep thinking about Elio. It hurts too much.

David raises an eyebrow. “So, are you planning on waiting for your father to die to collect your inheritance and only then you’ll allow yourself to lead the life you want?”

Oliver feels himself blush. He's never put it into words before, but yes, this is how he feels. He should be more grateful, he thinks, for everything his father has done for him. Then again, if he found out Oliver's secret, he would no longer do that, Oliver would no longer be his son. Does it work the other way around, too? Could Oliver distance himself from his father? Say, ‘Dad, I fell in love with a man and if you cannot accept that, then I am no longer your son’?

He feels strangely powerful thinking about doing that. Not that his father would be hurt by Oliver distancing himself from him, but he feels like it would at least give him some form of control over the situation.

There’s a fundamental difference between rejecting a loved one and being rejected by a loved one.

“I suppose I’ll have to tell him,” Oliver says and downs the rest of his drink.

“Your father or your boyfriend?” David asks and motions for Giovanni to bring Oliver another drink.

“Both,” Oliver answers and gratefully accepts the drink. “Although Elio isn’t my boyfriend.”

“He might become your boyfriend,” David counters.

“Or he might not,” Oliver says. “He might hate me.”

“Only one way to find out,” David says.

“Yes, I...I don’t know.” He takes a sip of his new drink and clenches his hand into a fist.

David offers him a cigarette and Oliver accepts it. “You should talk to him,” he says when he offers Oliver fire.

Oliver takes a drag of the cigarette and doesn’t meet David’s eyes. “Yeah,” he mumbles.

“Please, Oliver,” David says in a low voice. “I can’t tell you how painful it is to see someone make the same mistakes I made when I was younger. So, please, don’t be as stupid as I was and wait until it’s almost too late. Talk to him.”

Oliver feels his stomach churn and he’s not sure if it’s because he’s had too much alcohol on an empty stomach or if it’s because he can feel that he’s arrived at a crossroads in his life and everything is going to hinge on which decision he makes. Whatever he does, nothing is ever going to be the same again.

Going back to his old life in America seems impossible, although, if he tried, he’s sure he could keep up the act for at least a little while. It wouldn’t make him happy.

Talking to Elio, on the other hand, seems almost scarier than facing his father. He owes Elio that much, even if it might amount to nothing more than a goodbye. A real goodbye, then, an honest one, not the farce they had at the train station.

After that, maybe Oliver will feel as though he’s ready to move on with his life. Hopefully, this sort of limbo he’s been caught in will be over. He just doesn’t know what it’s going to be from then on, heaven or hell.

“Okay,” he says at last. “I'll talk to him...where’s the next payphone?”

* * *

The phone rings at 2 am. Elio is the one who answers it since he hasn't been able to get much sleep anyway, not since he got back from Bergamo.

Who would call in the middle of the night, he wonders. Probably someone who accidentally dialed the wrong number. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and answered the phone.

“Pronto?”

“Elio?” the caller asks

He recognizes that voice, even though it is distorted by static. It’s the voice he’s been dreaming about hearing again. Elio feels his knees start to tremble. He hasn't eaten a lot at dinner, but he still feels sick. “Oliver?”

“Yes,” Oliver says. “Hi, Elio,” he adds. His voice sounds odd. As though he's close to tears, Elio thinks, but he might be projecting his own feelings. It’s probably just the static.

“Hi,” Elio says and swallows around the lump in his throat. “How’s America? Did you settle back in alright?” he asks, forcing himself to sound more cheerful than he feels. “How late is it for you? You know it's the middle of the night here?”

“Yes, uh...I didn't take the plane,” Oliver says. “I'm in Paris.”

“What?” Elio sits down on the sofa next to the telephone because his legs won't support him anymore. “Why didn't you go home?”

“I couldn't,” Oliver replies and laughs. It sounds bitter. “I took another train from Milan and another one after that and I ended up in Paris. I've been here for a couple of days.”

“Why couldn't you?” Elio asks. His heart is beating quickly and his palms are starting to sweat uncomfortably. A wild hope is starting to bloom inside his chest, but he squashes it immediately. He shouldn't get his hopes up.

“You know why I couldn't.”

“Because of me?” Elio asks quietly, so quietly that he's not even sure if Oliver can hear him over the telephone.

“Because of you,” Oliver confirms. “I never told you, but you're the first man I ever slept with and...do your parents know?”

“Yes,” Elio answers

“How did they react?”

“Great,” he says and feels himself smiling for the first time during that conversation. “They were very supportive and said they loved me, no matter who I fell in love with.”

Oliver sighs. “I'm so glad to hear that,” he says. “If my parents found out I liked men, they would disown me or send me off to a correctional facility. I don’t know which option would be worse. You’re lucky, Elio.”

He doesn’t reply for a couple of seconds and instead bites his lower lip. “That’s why you don’t want to go back to America? Because you’re scared they’ll disown you? I’m sure if you talked to them…”

“My parents are nothing like yours,” Oliver interrupts him. “If I thought that there was a chance that they’d accept me, I would talk to them. As it is...I’m sorry, I’m rambling and...anyway, I called to let you know that...that...fuck, Elio, you remember when I said I was scared I messed you up?”

“Yes,” Elio whispers.

“I’m afraid the one who ended up messed up was me,” Oliver says and follows it up with another humorless laugh. Elio doesn't like the sound of it. If he could, he'd pull Oliver into his arms and kiss him until he was smiling again.

“Messed up? In what way?” he asks, a little scared of what the answer might be.

“In a good way,” Oliver answers. “The best way, probably. I can't go back to my family and...I knew you for less than two months, but I never felt this way with anyone before. I...I just couldn't do anything without telling you that. I like you so much that it's scaring me.”

“I feel the same,” Elio replies and Oliver laughs again. This time, though, it sounds like a real laugh. “What are we going to do now?”

“I might go home, after all,” Oliver begins, but suddenly starts cursing about how he doesn’t have any more change and their time’s almost up.

The line is dead before they can say their goodbyes, and Elio is left sitting alone on the sofa in the living room. He sleeps on the sofa, that night, hoping against hope that the phone is going to ring again.

It doesn’t.

* * *

Two days after their conversation on the phone (Elio begins to think that he might have hallucinated it all, the product of his insomniac mind), Elio sits by the pool and lets his feet dangle into the water. Without Oliver, it feels so empty, bereft of anything that made the sight special to him in the past.

At least now he knows he was not the only one who cannot quite seem to forget their affair. Perhaps it’s wrong, or even desperate, to cherish a nightly phone call so much, a phone call that probably only happened because Oliver had been too drunk to feel guilty.

If he knew how to reach him, Elio would probably have quite a few stern words for him, about how guilt is an entirely inappropriate emotional reaction to the time they spent together. But he doesn’t know how to contact Oliver, so he just sits by the pool, wearing Oliver’s shirt, and feels sorry for himself.

He closes his eyes and lets the sun warm his face. Elio is half-asleep when he hears footsteps approaching and frowns. Maybe it’s his father or his mother, trying to check on him whether he’s feeling alright.

“Elio?”

Elio immediately opens his eyes wide and sits up. He knows that voice.

The sun is blinding him, so, for a few seconds, he cannot see anything. Still, he calls out, “Oliver?”

When his vision returns to him, Oliver is standing there, in the middle of the orchard. Even though he’s looking worse for wear, like he hasn’t slept in days, Elio still thinks he looks stunning.

In a matter of seconds, Elio gets up from the side of the pool and launches himself into Oliver’s arms. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Paris,” Elio mumbles against Oliver’s chest.

“I didn’t have enough money for the train,” Oliver confesses sheepishly. “I hitchhiked all the way from Paris.”

“You…,” Elio starts but decides mid-sentence that his mouth could be put to better use than talking and presses his lips against Oliver’s in a desperate, hungry kiss. “I thought I'd never see you again,” he says breathlessly when he has to come up for air. “You said you were going _home_ , I don't…”

“I did,” Oliver says. “I went home.”

When Elio realizes what he meant, he grins widely and he just has to kiss Oliver again for that.

* * *

**2 Years Later**

“It’s not far,” Oliver promises for the fifth time that night. Not that Elio is counting, mind you, but he finds his boyfriend’s excitement mildly amusing.

“Are you sure you're going to find that bar again?” he teases him.

“I will,” Oliver insists and pulls him into another alley to look for the bar, or, more specifically, the bar’s owners. Elio and Oliver are staying in Paris for a few days and Oliver wants Elio to meet the men who are responsible for the fact that he and Elio are in a relationship today.

“I feel like you hallucinated the bar,” Elio says with a smug grin.

Oliver meets his gaze with a challenging expression. “If we weren't in public right now, I'd kiss you to wipe that smirk off your face.”

Elio makes a frustrated noise. “Remind me why we are in public again?”

“Later,” Oliver laughs, and this time, it’s a promise, not a goodbye.

After five more minutes, Oliver lets out a triumphant shout and points to one of the bars. “There,” he says excitedly. “This is it!”

“‘Héphestion’,” Elio reads. “Tell me again why you thought this was a straight bar at first?”

“I hope they still remember me,” Oliver says, ignoring Elio’s teasing.

Elio snorts. “Nobody who met you could ever forget you,” he replies as they enter the bar. “I couldn't.”

“That's because you have good taste, Elio,” Oliver whispers into his ear.

Elio bites back another witty remark because they walk up to the bar and Oliver strikes up a conversation with David and Giovanni.

Elio can see how Oliver must have felt when he met them for the first time. The way Giovanni and David act around each other, all the little touches and meaningful glances, it reminds Elio of his parents. The impact seeing a couple like them must have made on Oliver...he reaches for Oliver’s hand, laces their fingers together and squeezes gently. Oliver looks over, smiles and tilts Elio’s chin up, so they can share a kiss.

Later that evening, when Oliver excused himself to go to the bathroom, Elio leans over the bar and makes eye-contact with Giovanni and David. They both look at him with identical sympathetic expressions, like they are proud of him. “Thank you,” Elio says, without having to clarify what he’s grateful for. “Thank you so much. Merci beaucoup. Grazie mille.”

**Author's Note:**

>   * The quote at the beginning, which also inspired the title for this fic, is from the novella "[Jamila](http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Stories/Jamila.html)" by Kyrgyz author Chinghiz Aitmatov. French poet Louis Aragon famously called it "the world's most beautiful love story". I'm not quite sure if I agree, but it is certainly worth a read!
>   * Giovanni and David are characters from James Baldwin's beautiful novel "Giovanni's Room". Ever since I first read this novel a few years ago, I imagined an alternative version of the story in which they decide to work on their problems together and be honest with each other. With this fic, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and fix both Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni's Room. If you haven't yet read the novel, I definitely recommend it - however, the ending extremely sad, just be aware of that.
>   * The whole "character gets drunk in bar, meets older gay people who convince him to accept himself"-storyline was inspired by the East German movie "[Coming Out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Out_\(1989_film\))" (1989). You can find German streams online. Unfortunately, I don't know whether there is an English version available or not.
>   * I don't actually speak Italian (yet), so I used Google Translate, i. e. I don't know if it's wrong or not. If you speak Italian and it sounds stilted/wrong to you, please let me know how to correct it!
> 

> 
> I am still very much getting used to writing for this ship and so any comments/suggestions etc. are most welcome!
> 
> You can also find me [@almost-annette](https://almost-annette.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
